 This is going to be a fun video. You can just, you know, I can feel it deep down in my man parts. Ah, oh yeah, I forgot I was recording. Well, it's been said now. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review, your source for everything One Piece. My name is Liam and just ignore what I said in the intro about... But today we are here to talk about something that no joke holds the entirety of One Piece together. No, it's not the characters, it's not the world building, it's not the action, not the drama, not the comedy, not the mystery and certainly not the men with green hair residing in boxes. No, no, as treasurous as they are. What binds One Piece together and allows it to survive is, and are you ready? Prison time. That would like to emphasize at this point that I am not joking, mostly because I am not very funny. But if you were to take out all of the time that characters were captured or imprisoned in One Piece, then this story would quite literally fall apart. And I do mean literally because you would be cutting out a lot of manga panels and what you would be left with is a mess of the remnants of One Piece on your floor. Now this is probably not something that you consciously noticed, but if I asked you to tell me how many times Luffy has been captured or imprisoned in One Piece, what is the answer you would give me? Five, 10, 15, 20, 30, 30. You're a madman. Or are you? Maybe, I don't know. That's because it's almost impossible to tell off the top of your head because of how often Oda implements imprisonment as a core building block of One Piece. And sure, I know that this idea sounds utterly absurd, but this video is going to explain in an informative and potentially entertaining manner why imprisonment is so essential to One Piece. And just for some added fun, we're going to be counting the amount of times that Luffy has been specifically caught or jailed, the final result of which may shock you. Well, now just realize, since we're talking about imprisonment, I should probably like change the lighting to reflect that a bit. Yeah, there we go. That's more prison-y. I mean, we like to paint prisons with corp blues and stuff, don't we? There we go. This is the one. Meanwhile, I should also say that this is the one video sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends, the mobile game thingy that you can download yourself, which has absolutely nothing to do with One Piece, except for when it takes place on a pirate ship, which it sometimes does. You know what it does have to do with though? Champions. Ever. Ever so many champions. One of which is this guy, Roxam, who claims to be the perfect assassin, despite the fact that he is primarily bright, neon blue. But you know what? Maybe he's just that good. We also have Sissia Flametongue, who I believe effectively burns her teammates in order to make herself stronger, so that's just lovely. Selfish, but lovely. In this month, Raid have a ton of new content, including 11 champions, 200 new missions, that's a lot, and one super exclusive legendary champion, if you managed to finish the aforementioned missions. And if that's not enough, they've also added five tough levels to almost every dungeon in the game. So look, just go and do the thing. There's a link in the description, you click it, it does fun things and you'll be raiding all sorts of shadows before you know it. Good luck. But to begin our incarceration quest, we have a quick round of failed jail, a very simple minigame, the rules of which are as follows. Here we see three impelled down inmates. Now, due to the negligence of now headboard and hunnable, one of these inmates is going to escape, and it's going to be your job to guess which one it is. Should you guess incorrectly, then your punishment will be to subscribe to the Grand Line review, also resulting in consistent injections of one piece culture administered straight into your YouTube feed. And if you are correct, then you yourself will be imprisoned in the newly vacated cell. So which inmate will it be? Make your choice now and we shall reveal the answer in three, two, one, and bam, it was Bon Clay who escaped. In stark contrast to the other reality of canon. So if you answered incorrectly, then you know the thing to do and please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet. Welcome. But why is imprisonment such an essential aspect of one piece? Well, I would actually go so far as to say the majority have shown in series as a whole, but very few express this idea better than one piece, and that's simply due to the sheer length of the series. But Oda leans on this device so much because rather counter intuitively, it's an incredibly easy way to move the story forward, which is quite fascinating because you think it would do the exact opposite and present a roadblock to be overcome and kind of, you know, deliberately hinder progress, which in some stories it definitely does. But after analyzing roughly 1000 chapters of the old one piece, I can say that imprisonment is generally used for one of four main purposes. The first is to prompt action. A very simple, easy example of this is Robin during any slobby. She had been captured by the world government, so the straw hats were prompted to go and save her. Without Robin being captured, there is no sea train or any slobby arc. So already that's a pretty big hit to one piece. The second major use for imprisonment is naturally to prevent action, which can mean keeping a character from joining the action too swiftly, as often seen with Luffy, or to prevent a logical course of action from taking place. And an example of this would be one piece film Gold, where Zoro is caught, thus preventing the crew from doing the reasonable thing and just leaving Grand Zoro. Imprisonment can lock characters in place, even if they aren't the ones being literally imprisoned. Our third all-important use is to convey information, and let's use a non-one piece example here. Think of almost any Bond film, when James Bond is caught by the bad guy? This is where a lot of their plan and all motivations are revealed to Bond as well as to the audience. And one piece does a lot of this. And our final category is a very fun one, which are special purposes. Oh, these are one-off technically driven instances, like for example on Thriller Bark, Luffy was caught there so that his shadow could be inserted into Oz. These tend to be my favorite because of all the fun creative outcomes, but sadly we don't get to see them all that often. So let's put some of this knowledge to use by examining Luffy. Before he even set out on his journey, Luffy was caught or imprisoned three times. Once when Higuma took him hostage, then Ace and Sabo tied him to a tree, followed by Luffy being abducted by Porchemi, so I'm just gonna count that as the same imprisonment. But then Luffy gets caught, again, by Blue Jam later along with Ace. And all of these instances serve extraordinarily important purposes. With Higuma, it was designed prompt action from Shanks, resulting in one of the most iconic moments in the series, as well as the ignition of Luffy's resolve to become a great pirate on his own. The Porchemi imprisonment was similar. It prompted action from Ace and Sabo, and due to this incident, the three of them became brothers because Luffy didn't give up any information during said imprisonment. And in the case of Blue Jam, this was done to prevent action. It took Luffy and Ace out of the picture so that Sabo could be propelled forward on his journey. So you can already see how amazing it is that these natural roadblocks actually result in more progress being made. And let's think about it. What does One Piece look like without Luffy being captured on these three occasions? Well, firstly, he doesn't develop his emotional drive to become the pirate king, nor does he become brothers with Sabo or Ace. So that already breaks One Piece completely, and we haven't even properly set out on our journey yet. Although just a quick note, I'm not saying that these things could not have been achieved without using imprisonment, they most certainly could have. But the greater point I'm getting at is that it's just such an easy and effective device. Having characters be captured is such an efficient way of getting to where the author wants to go. So how about a non-Luffy example? Do you guys remember Zorro? Well, let's be honest, you probably wouldn't if it wasn't for imprisonment. Because if Zorro had not gotten arrested in Charlestown, then he would not be part of the Straw Hat Pirates. Luffy's deal was basically, you know, free you if you join my crew. And without having been imprisoned in the first place, then Luffy would not have that leverage. So it prompts action from Zorro to join the crew, and rather swiftly as well. Whereas if Zorro had his freedom at the time, yes, this still could have happened, but it would have taken something longer and more convoluted to eventually convince him. Which we can see in the examples of almost every other Straw Hat. And I really just cannot overstate how effective it is to have characters become captured or imprisoned. If you are a writer and you need something or anything at all to happen, then just write a prison scene and it will deliver for you every time. Now with the rest of Luffy's east blue journey, he gets caught a further three times, bringing out total to six. So he gets caged by Buggy during Orange Town forced work as a choreboy on Baratier and is caught by Buggy again for Logtown. Now just on Baratier, I'd like to highlight this because this is not your typical imprisonment. However, it's close enough because Luffy does get put into indentured servitude, which is just being a prisoner with a fancy name. And what does it do? It prompts action because Luffy then agrees to defeat Don Krieg in exchange for his freedom and it simultaneously prevents action because it keeps him on Baratier instead of having Luffy immediately sail to our long park with the rest of the crew. So it is an almost stupidly efficient imprisonment and it just makes the story elements fall into place so cleanly. Whereas without that element, once again, things would just get very convoluted. Now for something I don't want to go into too deeply but should probably be flagged right now is kind of relevant. Mental imprisonment is also a thing and in fact it's the entire driving force behind our long park. Nami feels bound to our long and trapped within his grasp even if it's not literally. And you can say the same thing for Sanji on Hawkeye-Kyland and like a whole ton of other characters in One Piece. However, this is very much an entire topic of its own and I do want to stick to purely physical imprisonment because there is more than enough to work with just dealing with that. So how does Luffy fare in the grand line? Well, not too bad actually. Luffy doesn't get caught again until alabaster which for him is that's a pretty amazing streak which will bring his total to seven. Imprisonment is still an essential element of the series during this time though with a wonderful example being Little Garden where Zoro Nami and Vivi are caught in the Kern de Labra cakeage of Mr. Three which serves another double purpose. It prevents action from the character's court, Zoro in particular being very relevant there, but it also prompts action with the hero of this engagement actually being Usopp because Luffy was also caught in the colors trap of Miss Goldenweak. Which I'm not going to add to his count but you could argue that you should maybe. Either way, having characters bound is essential to any sort of drama playing out on Little Garden and by now I think we're starting to get the picture yeah? So let's do a quick pre-timeskip roundup which results in Luffy getting caught three more times. Once which we've already mentioned on Thriller Bark, the next on Amazon Lily which included an added element of Niki Luffy and his final pre-timeskip imprisonment is very appropriately and impaled down after being defeated by Magellan. Taking Luffy to a career total of 10 imprisonments all before hitting the age of 18. He was a very troublesome child. All of which are examples with purposes and I'm sure you can work those out because they're all very straightforward but I do want to flag something much bigger. Almost certainly the most consequential use of imprisonment in Olaf 1P so far and that is the capture of Ace. Without imprisoning Ace we don't have impaled down Marineford or the post-war arc, it just doesn't happen. That's how integral imprisonment is in this entire saga and you can't substitute it for anything either like you may be able to do in all of the other examples I've mentioned and that's because it's not just a handy dandy devices we've explored thus far but also integral to the themes of One Piece. It might strike you as somewhat ironic that a series which champions freedom above all else spends so much time with its characters imprisoned but I guess that's kind of the whole idea. You cannot understand the value of freedom without having it taken away and Oda spends a lot and I mean a lot of time in One Piece taking away freedom in order to express this. You would be very hard pressed to find an arc in the series that does not involve a key element of imprisonment. Even Long Ring Longland, the meme arc of One Piece, even that at its core is about freedom because we're risking crew members' futures by participating in the Davy Backfight. And that's not to say that these arcs don't exist, Syrup Village would probably be a good example, Reverse Mountain and other but they're also incredibly short experiences. There is no long substantive arc in One Piece that tells it's story without leaning heavily on the imprisonment device at some point. So looking at Luffy's post timeskip, he gets caught again on Punk Hazard, again on Hawkeye Island and obviously again on Warner. Taking Luffy to a solid 13 imprisonments which by any standards is a frankly startling criminal record. But even in the post timeskip arcs where Luffy does remain free, imprisonment is still well and truly present. During Fishman Island, Zoro Usopp and Brooke get caught and Shira Hoshi's entire character arc is about how she was imprisoned for her own good. During Dressrosa, Lore gets caught by Dol Flamingo, the Tontata driver driven by their slavery within the Smile Factory, Viola has no choice but to be a prisoner of the Don Quixote Pirates, and everyone who was turned into a toy by sugar becomes actively imprisoned. And that is not an exclusive list. There is a lot of imprisonment going on in Dressrosa. I just, I don't have the hours to state it all. But at this point, what arc are we missing? Alright, Zo. Here the entire emotional crux of the story is Raizo being imprisoned in order to keep him safe. And of course, it also kicks off the Sanji imprisonment for Holcake Island. And then I suppose if we do want to look at the reverie. Well, there's a lot of focus about how the world nobles wield slaves in order to make their paradise operational. And even the imprisonment of Bathola Mikuma, all of which is prompting the revolutionary army to even exist at all let alone act during the reverie. By the way, if you've made it this far into the video then comment down below using the word fluorescent. It'll be great because we'll get to confuse everyone who leave comments before finishing the video because that's a thing that happens for reasons I don't understand. But I maintain that one piece as a story cannot actually function without the device of imprisonment. Incredibly counterintuitively, nothing would ever happen if characters were not being captured, which usually results in a quick response action. That or as a device to remove certain individuals from the picture so that others can act or to just give us a calm moment of exposition or any other crazy special purpose that Oda can think of. It's just his go-to narrative technique and I can't really blame him for resorting to it so often because it just works so damn well. Particularly with the focus of the series, I mean how could you not love the very idea that Oda is basically able to wield imprisonment for the purpose of projecting freedom. And just to cap off, Luffy I'd like to add that even though he's been captured or imprisoned 13 times, he still has never been caught by the Marines. The one group it is whose job is to, you know, arrest pirates have not managed to capture the most obtainable man on the planet. Good job guys. But to explore more one-piece-based madness, next up we have a video examining what is quite possibly the most unobtainable goal in the series, which is asking ourselves if any individual character can defeat all three admirals. Surprisingly tough question and I look forward to seeing you there.